Programmable integrated circuits such as field programmable gate arrays offer a large amount of flexibility in that a single device may be configured to implement a wide array of different circuits. Part of the design process for programmable integrated circuits is speed modeling, which involves, among other things, obtaining accurate speed parameters for various components of the programmable integrated circuit. These parameters may be important for improving circuit model design and for simply characterizing the speed of the programmable integrated circuit as a whole.
In the past, techniques for measuring speed parameters of a programmable integrated circuit involved relatively large circuits with a large number of delay elements. Such circuits may suffer from inaccuracies, both in that the speed measurements taken are inaccurate and that the number of speed parameters that can be measured is a low percentage of the total number of speed parameters in a programmable integrated circuit. For these reasons, improved techniques for measuring speed parameters of programmable integrated circuits are needed.